Saturday Smash-Up 17: Mega Final Smash

Welcome to the Saturday Smash-Up, a weekly recap of all of the new and exciting information from the week in Smash Pics of the Day. What am I talking about? Well, here’s a primer: Since the announcement of Super Smash Brothers for Wii U and Super Smash Brothers for 3DS back at E3 2013, project director Masahiro Sakurai has been posting daily updates on SmashBros.com, just as he did with Super Smash Brothers Brawl during its development cycle. The update is just a screenshot from one of the two versions, but Sakurai provides a small description of the screen on the Super Smash Bros Director’s Room Miiverse page. Sometimes we see the announcement of a character (most recently with the Smash Bros Direct Five on April 8th), other times it’s just a goofy pose. Check back here every week for a week’s worth of Smash updates, Sakurai musings, and Fanelli reaction.

Another week of screenshots brings us a new Final Smash, the answer to a burning Charizard question, and a closer look at some sweet alternate costumes, among other things. It’s just another week closer to E3, so we shouldn’t expect any big time announcements any time soon. Our time will come! On to this week’s updates!

Monday, May 12th, 2014

Sakurai: “Pic of the day. Here’s wire frame Little Mac–re-envisioned from the original Punch-Out!! game. The man that actually drew the pixel art wire frame in the original was none other than Shigeru Miyamoto. He said he drew the pixels for the wire frame on graph paper.“

Editor’s Thoughts: I love this costume! Hours were spent as a child playing the arcade Punch-Out, listening to “BODY BLOW! BODY BLOW!” over and over again. Seeing that wireframe format is really cool, and I can’t wait to use it.

Tuesday, May 13th, 2014

Sakurai Pic 1: “Pic of the day. Here’s Charizard’s new special attack, Flare Blitz. It’s a very powerful attack–however, you’ll take recoil damage if you make contact. Pretty true to the original game, huh? Flare Blitz is Charizard’s side special move, and Rock Smash is the down special move.“

Editor’s Thoughts: DAT MEGA CHARIZARD. Holy crap that looks really cool. I’m assuming that the Final Smash is a fully-controlled Final Smash a la Giga Mac and Giga Bowser, which makes it even better. Blue Flamethrower? Yes please!

Wednesday, May 14th, 2014

Sakurai: “Pic of the day. Here’s one of my personal favorites, the trophy of Brittany from Pikmin 3. She won’t be joining the battle, but her model and expression is well-designed.“

Editor’s Thoughts: I was wondering if and when the newest Pikmin explorers would show their faces, and I suppose trophies are the only way they’re going to make it into the game. I wonder what the Alph and Captain trophies will look like…

Thursday, May 15th, 2014

Sakurai: “Pic of the day. The unexpected Assist Trophy, the TV-Game 15! Color TV-Game 15 is a home entertainment system that was released in 1977 in Japan before the release of Space Invaders. This is the oldest game to join the Smash Bros. series. Normally, controllers for these types of games had knobs with variable resistors–these allowed the players to control in-game movement by how far they twisted the knobs. The TV-Game 15 used microswitches instead. We’ve worked a little too hard to reenact the behavior of the original, so the paddles always move in linear paths with the same, consistent speed. We pay attention to such peculiar details!“

Editor’s Thoughts: Pong. Pong is an Assist Trophy. They can’t call it Pong, I suppose because the name Pong is trademarked, but freakin’ PONG is an Assist Trophy. That’s amazing and awesome and any other positive descriptor beginning witih A.

Friday, May 16th, 2014

Sakurai: “Pic of the day. You can choose to play as the girl villager too!! How lovely.“

Editor’s Thoughts: Lovely indeed! The fact that Nintendo is giving male and female options to some of its characters is quite awesome. Come to think of it, has there ever been more female fighters in one game outside of Rumble Roses? Wii Fit Trainer, Peach, Zelda, Sheik, Samus, Zero Suit Samus, Rosalina, and now the Villager? All we need now is the Mii (HINT) and perhaps Lucina over Chrom (which won’t happen but HINT HINT) and we’re set.

As the big show looms, my mind wanders to what else Sakurai could have in store for us. We know 29 characters, a slew of stages, and a ton of other information, so what else could he be hiding? It’s a fascinating question, one that won’t be answered for three weeks, but the speculation is so much fun!

That’s all for now, but before we go, it’s time for the Song of the Week! At the end of every week, I’m going to post a Nintendo tune that I’d like to see make it into either version of Smash (especially if My Music returns, WHICH WE NOW KNOW IT IS WHOOPEEEEE). I’ll take requests for songs on the GamerNode Twitter page or on my personal one (remember the #SaturdaySmashUp hashtag!), so let’s jam to some sweet music every Saturday.

This week I’m going Pikmin in honor of Brittany, and I’m hoping for a track that sounds like it’s should be annoying at first with its weird sound-effect, but dang if it doesn’t leave an impression after the 5th or 6th time you hear it. It’ll probably have to be in a Pikmin 3 medley, as I’m not sure how viable it would be on its own, but I’d sure like to hear it while I’m throwing down in the Garden of Hope.

Jason lives and breathes gaming. Legend tells that he taught himself to read using Wheel of Fortune Family Edition on the NES. He's been covering this industry for three years, all with the Node, and you can see his ugly mug once a week on Hot Off The Grill.